


Swindled

by ultharkitty



Series: Make Love Not War [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 14:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Millions of years before the events in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/986979/">Make Love Not War</a>, Smokescreen gets himself in trouble. </p><p>Contains Smokescreen's complicated and ridiculous love life, references to intimacy and criminality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ayngelcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayngelcat/gifts).



Iacon Minimum Security Prison was far from the worst place Smokescreen had ever found himself. The bunks were level, the rations acceptable, and his fellow convicts were the non-violent sort, prone to swindling, wheeling and dealing, but not to taking him apart piece by piece and giving him a long hot soak in a smelting pit. All in all, it was safer than the crowd he rolled with in his everyday life, even if the gaming left a lot to be desired. 

"Lights out!" the warden yelled, and Smokescreen covered his optics so the last flare of sodium wouldn't leave him with streaks in his visual field. 

His cellmate creaked on the bunk below. "You got any chips?"

"Only the ones in my head," Smokescreen replied. He stretched out and prepared to power down. Three days served, thirty thousand two hundred and ninety two left to go. 

"Shame." Another creak. "Could really do with something to pass the time, y'know?"

"Don't remind me. Say, Fuse, you never told me what you're in for."

"You never told me neither," Fuse shot back. 

Smokescreen grinned in the gloom. "Poor life choices," he said. "Epically poor life choices."

"Like what?" Fuse demanded. Outside, the warden snarled for quiet. Fuse continued in a low whisper. "Don't hold out on me."

Smokescreen drew a deep vent and continued to smile at the ceiling, holding out.

Fuse huffed. "All right. They caught me sellin' stims to the new-builds at the Academy. Gave me twelve fraggin' orns."

Smokescreen fought hard to keep that smile on his face. "Too bad."

"Your round," Fuse prompted. 

"One vorn," Smokescreen said. 

"Harsh. What they catch you with?"

"The Kalidon-Utrexus diamond."

Fuse whistled through his vents. " _Frag._ "

"You don't say." Smokescreen shuffled onto his front, propping his head on his arms. 

"So?" Fuse said. 

"Huh?"

"So how'd you do it? How'd you steal a diamond as big as your head?"

A sigh escaped his vents, and Smokescreen wished the truth hadn't come sooner to him than a lie. "I didn't," he said. "Someone gave it to me."

"Like frag," Fuse laughed. 

"You asked," Smokescreen said. "Goodnight."

"Awww, c'mon. Who did it? Who'd give you a thing like that?"

"Someone who didn't want to be where I am now?" Smokescreen said. Only it would have been worse for him; no low security holding pen for his type. 

" _And?_ Your mystery mech got a name?"

"Yep," Smokescreen said. He had a whole lot of other things too, several of which Smokescreen really didn't want to think about right now. Or for the next thirty thousand two hundred and ninety two days, unless by some miracle he could get a bit of privacy. 

Fuse grunted. "And that's as much as you're gonna tell me, right?"

"Yep."

"Fragger."


	2. Chapter 2

He was leaning by the exit when Smokescreen got out, hips cocked, his rotors gently turning. The cogsucking spawn of a trash compactor. 

Smokescreen stepped out into the fresh breeze. Five days served out of a vorn. Five days. His processors were still catching up.

Vortex grinned, his mask off and his weapons glinting in the neon from the prison's Release Office sign. 

Smokescreen prepared to stalk past, to transform and drive and drive, and frag knew where he'd go, he didn't care as long as it was away.

"Looking good," Vortex said. 

"You left me." Smokescreen flexed his door wings; frag, he could do with a wax.

"I came back for you." The grin morphed into a smirk, and Vortex stepped neatly between Smokescreen and the open road. "You think your poor-aft friends paid your bribes?" he asked. "I missed you."

"You left me!" Smokescreen cut himself off. He moved closer, cutting the volume on his voice. "You left me holding that fraggin' diamond. You knew it was hot, you knew I wasn't gonna get away with it. Where were you when they pulled me in? Where were you for the trial?"

"Like that was gonna help," Vortex said. "I paid a lot of money to bust you out, least you could be is grateful."

Smokescreen looked past Vortex, at the dusty dry street, the highway beyond. A lot of money was no good reason not to be angry. "Least you could be is sorry." 

Vortex's mask closed with a snap. "This ain't the place," he said. "Let me buy you a drink."

"A drink?" Smokescreen's jaw dropped. "I went to prison for you," he hissed, but Vortex leaned over and stroked the edge of his doorwing, and the rage just fizzled out. "Whu?"

"I'll buy you a drink," Vortex whispered, the air from his vents warm on Smokescreen's seams, and scrap but he ought to have more self control than this. "We'll go to that bar you like, the one with the dancers. I'm getting you an oil bath and polish, make you all shiny and smooth."

"That... That doesn't," but Smokescreen didn't have the words, not after five days in the company of Fuse, and with those clever fingers on his hinges.

"I've got us a room at the Grand," Vortex told him. "Remember what we did last time we were there?"

Smokescreen shivered; how could he forget? 

"There's ten thousand at the casino in your name." Vortex tweaked his hinge again. "Is that enough of a sorry for you?"

It shouldn't be, but ten thousand credits? And an oil bath, a pleasure drone, a long slow frag against the forcefield the hotel used in lieu of windows. And Vortex: repentant, attentive. 

"I must have a screw loose," Smokescreen said. 

Vortex just laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

"Hey!" A greasy finger poked Smokescreen under the hood. "Hey you, don't I know you?"

Smokescreen leaned a little on his bar stool, enough to peer past his own curves at the source of the disturbance. "Uh..."

"Sure I do!" The newcomer beamed. "It's me, remember. Fuse."

Smokescreen shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. The round face did look familiar, but then so did the bartender and the bouncer, and the weird alien couple in the corner, and he didn't exactly make a habit of remembering their names. 

"Fuse," the grounder repeated. "Fuse from the bottom bunk. You're the diamond guy, Smokey. We were at Iacon together."

"Oh yeah, Fuse!" Smokescreen checked his chronometer: another five breems until Vortex was due to show up. He dredged his databanks for any memory of his short stay in prison. "Sorry I didn't recognise you."

"It's OK," Fuse said. "How'd you get out so quick? Thought you were in for a vorn?"

"Got bailed," Smokescreen said. 

"Sweet. Mind if I sit here?" Not waiting for an answer, Fuse clambered onto the next stool along. "Hi, barkeep! I'll have a blue nebula, and one for my friend."

"Nah, I'm OK," Smokescreen said. He knocked back a shot, and refilled the tiny cube from the jug in front of him. 

"So how's life treating you?" Fuse asked. "I got out two orns back, been getting back into the game, you know how it is."

"Not me," Smokescreen said, knocking back another shot. His auxiliary intake activated, diverting the flow to his secondary storage tank. If he could get to the bottom of the jug before he started seeing double, his new upgrade was working. "I'm as clean as a new diode."

"Going straight?" Fuse said. "Sounds depressing. Is that why you're drinking shots by yourself in an underground bar?"

"I'm waiting for a friend," Smokescreen said. 

"Me too!" Fuse accepted his drink from the barkeeper and paid with a grubby cred chip. "We can wait together."

Smokescreen laughed. "Sure, buddy." He swilled the next shot around his mouth, enjoying the taste and the fumes before sending it down to his auxiliary tank. He waited a moment, then sighed. No buzz, no thrill, no hint of increased inebriation. Excellent. 

Fuse elbowed him in the side. "So what happened next?" he said.

"What?"

"After your 'friend' bailed you out." Fuse leaned on the bar, and wiped a line in the condensation on his glass. "I can smell a romance at fifty paces," he said. "So is it true? Was it your mystery mech?"

"What the... People were gossiping about me?"

"Sure." Fuse shrugged. "What else was there to do? Don't worry, Tremor told Wretch who told me who your mystery mech is, but the word didn't reach the Wardens." 

"OK," Smokescreen said. He took another shot, and this time let it hit his primary tank. "So who is he?"

Fuse leaned over, his optics wide. "That rotary," he says. "The one who works for that bigshot with the cannons in Kaon. I'm not gonna say his name. Word is he paid your bribes and everything."

"Yep," Smokescreen said. 

"I knew it!" Fuse grinned. "You took the rap for him, so he came back and bailed you out. Yeah, that's romance."

Smokescreen rolled his optics. "Don't let him hear you say that," he said. 

"What? Is he here?" Fuse glanced around. 

"In about three breems," Smokescreen said. It was funny the responses Vortex prompted in people: agitation, terror, jealousy. But Smokescreen had to admit, wide-eyed curiosity was a first. 

"He taking you somewhere nice?" Fuse said. 

To paradise, with any luck. "Maybe," Smokscreen replied. "Who're you waiting for?"

"Some finance guy," Fuse said. "I need creds quick or I'm never gonna get my grid back online."

"Your grid?"

"It's part of the Undercity near the Academy," Fuse said. "My streets. But first I need product, and that means I need creds."

Smokescreen nodded, as his mind began to drift. Fuse chattered on about distribution and narrow profit margins and the opportunities inherent in the new academic year, and Smokescreen thought of organic textiles smoothing wax over his bodywork, of dark hands sliding up his thighs and a slick glossa on his anterior node, teasing him to climax. 

"Oh hey, he's here!" Fuse banged on Smokescreen's shoulder and gave a brief wave in the direction of the door. Smokescreen took another shot, and by the time he turned around it was too late. 

"Smokes?"

His fuel pump stalled. "Swindle?"

Fuse grinned wider. "You know each other?" 

"Yeah," Swindle said coldly. But he hustled Fuse over and took the stool next to Smokescreen. "I'll have a coolant on dry ice," he said to Fuse, before giving Smokescreen's drinking arrangements a critical eye. "Drowning your sorrows?" he sneered. 

"Something like that," Smokescreen said. He sent another shot down to join the one in his regular tank, and began to contemplate the benefits of getting completely fendered. 

"Hate to say I told you so." Swindle smirked. "But I told you so."

"Told him what?" Fuse said.

"He knows," Swindle said. "Hey, Smokes, hate to break it to you, but whatever two cred axle grinder did your polish missed a bit."

Smokescreen flexed his doors, drawing Swindle's eye. "I like your new upgrades," he said. "I didn't think they could make your mouth any bigger, but I guess I was wrong."

"Uh, guys," Fuse said, but Swindle's happy conversational tone cut him off. 

"Course, I can't blame you for letting yourself go. It's hard when you find yourself on the scrapheap. Or so I've heard."

Smokescreen poured another shot. "You get a few scratches when you see some action," he said. "Must be why your paint always looks so new."

Fuse stuck an arm between them and waved. "Guys?"

Swindle spun on his chair, turning his back to Smokescreen. "I'll take my coolant with a sprinkle of titanium," he said sweetly. "You'll have to forgive him. It's his Praxian coding, it's so middle-of-the-range."

"You'd know," Smokescreen muttered. He took three shots in succession, hoping they might smother the burn in his chest. Swindle must have felt it: the tug from the bond, the prickling in his circuits. His spark swirled, and he wanted nothing more than to punch Swindle in his stupid smug face, maybe while spiking him hard against the bar. "Frag."

He nursed his drink, failing to ignore Swindle's chatter about variable interest rates and exclusivity clauses. The barkeeper gave him a sympathetic look as he passed by, and Smokescreen offered up a sad smile. He didn't notice when his chronometer rolled right on through the three breem marker. 

He did notice the prickle of a familiar energy field on his back, however, and a hush to his left.

Swindle broke the silence. "Fuse, I think we're done. I'll arrange the credit transfer in the morning. Vortex, what the frag are you doing here?" 

Smokescreen suppressed a shiver as a hand caressed the back of his neck. "Hey there," he said, and turned in time to see the look on Fuse's face as he made for the door.

"Picking up a little something for later," Vortex said, keeping his hand on Smokescreen. "Of course, there's always room for one more."

Smokescreen took a long vent. "No," he said. "There isn't."

Vortex got between them. "You're hot together," he said, and Smokescreen reached for his drink. The bartender had definitely heard that. "Can't tell me it wouldn't be good."

"I can," Smokescreen said. He downed the pitcher into his auxiliary tank; there wasn't as much left as he'd thought. "C'mon, we're leaving."

"That's just like you," Swindle said, "always running away."

Smokescreen's spark whirled. "Put a cork in it, Swindle."

"Get smelted."

Vortex slid a proprietary hand around Smokescreen's waist. "Be seeing you, Swin."

"Tomorrow, fourteen hundred joors." Swindle turned to the bar and his expensive glass of coolant. "Don't be late."

"Tomorrow?" Smokescreen said as soon as they were outside. "I thought you had a three day stretch."

Vortex shrugged. "It's just one meeting." 

"One meeting," Smokescreen said, "some drinks, a little light intercourse on the conference table."

"Maybe." Vortex's hand went wandering, cupping Smokescreen's aft. "Why, you jealous?"

"I'll give you one guess," Smokescreen said. They came to a halt at the main street, and he waited while Vortex transformed. So it was going to be one of those journeys. "You're going to make it up to me," he said. 

Vortex started up his rotors. "I still think you'd be hot together," he said. "Can't blame a mech for trying."

Smokescreen grabbed a hold of Vortex's cargo hook, preparing himself as the rotary took off. "Watch me."


End file.
